The story behind the hymn
Frances Havergal wrote the hymn after a night at a friend's house where, she said, several unconverted and careless guests were changed. Too glad to sleep, she spent the night praising God, and the stanzas of Take My Life came one after another, each beginning with the same surrendered word: take.
The hymn inventories a whole self and gives it away piece by piece: life, moments, hands, feet, voice, lips, silver and gold, intellect, will, heart, love. It is the most thorough act of consecration in English hymnody — a slow, deliberate handing-over of everything a person is and has.
Havergal lived it. Convicted by her own line take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold, she packed up her jewellery and sent it to a missions society, keeping back only a few pieces of family memory. The hymn ends where consecration always ends: take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
The lyrics
Take my life, and let it beConsecrated, Lord, to Thee;Take my moments and my days,Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them moveAt the impulse of Thy love;Take my feet, and let them beSwift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me singAlways, only, for my King;Take my lips, and let them beFilled with messages from Thee.
Take my will, and make it Thine;It shall be no longer mine:Take my heart, it is Thine own;It shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pourAt Thy feet its treasure-store:Take myself, and I will beEver, only, all for Thee.
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The Scripture behind it
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice — the hymn is this verse, itemised.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Yield yourselves unto God — the surrender the hymn keeps repeating.